Thousands of panicked Afghans and US citizens desperately tried to get on US military flights that were airlifting people out. In the end the military was able to rescue more than 130,000 civilians before the final US military aircraft departed.
That chaos was the result of the State Department failing to call for an evacuation of US personnel until it was too late, both former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and US Central Command retired General Kenneth McKenzie told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
UN ‘appalled’ by public executions in Afghanistan
UN ‘appalled’ by public executions in Afghanistan
“On 14 August the non-combatant evacuation operation decision was made by the Department of State and the US military alerted, marshalled, mobilised and rapidly deployed faster than any military in the world could ever do,” Milley said.
But the State Department’s decision came too late, Milley said.
“The fundamental mistake, the fundamental flaw was the timing of the State Department,” Milley said. “That was too slow and too late.”
Evacuation orders must come from the State Department, but in the weeks and months before Kabul fell to the Taliban, the Pentagon was pressing the State Department for evacuation plans, and was concerned that State was not ready, McKenzie said.
“We had forces in the region as early as 9 July, but we could do nothing,” McKenzie said.
“I believe the events of mid and late August 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the [evacuation] for several months, in fact until we were in extremis and the Taliban had overrun the country,” McKenzie said.
Milley was the nation’s top-ranking military officer at the time. He had urged Biden to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces there to give Afghanistan’s special forces enough backup to keep the Taliban at bay and allow the US military to hold on to Bagram Air Base, which could have provided the military additional options to respond to Taliban attacks.
Biden did not approve the larger residual force, opting to keep a smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the US embassy. That smaller force was not adequate to keeping Bagram, which was quickly taken over by the Taliban.
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‘Grave threat’: Pakistan justifies air strikes on Taliban rebels in Afghanistan
The White House found last year that the withdrawal was chaotic because Biden was “constrained” by previous agreements made by Trump to withdraw forces.
That 2023 internal review further appeared to shift any blame in the August 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport, saying it was the US military that made one possibly key decision.
“To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the president repeatedly asked whether the military required additional support to carry out their mission at HKIA,” the 2023 report said, adding: “Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate threats.”
A message left with the State Department was not immediately returned on Tuesday.
